A senior lecturer of pure mathematics at the University of Sheffield, Dr Cheng is on a one-woman mission to demonstrate the everyday uses of the infinite number.

Dr Cheng told Yahoo! News: "I'm really keen on finding fun ways of bringing mathematics to a wider audience. Too many people have bad memories of maths from boring lessons at school - but I love maths, and want to show everyone else that maths is fun as well as useful.

"The number pi is important because it's crucial for understanding circles and everything circular like cylinders, cones and spheres. And these are everywhere - pies, cakes, plates, manhole covers, the earth, the sun, traffic cones, wine bottles.

"With pi we can work out how much steel we'll need to make a manhole cover, how much glass we need to make a wine bottle, and how much pastry we need to make a pie."

Pi Day, which is celebrated on March 14 because of the Americanised date system (3/14), has only been observed since 2009 but has already built up a cult following.